Founder and creative director of Bellingcat and director of Bellingcat Productions BV. Author of We Are Bellingcat.
Eliot Higgins
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Trump announces the US is planning to invade Iran.
Wow. UK defence sec'y John Healey resigns. His resignation letter says DIP settlement he was given "falls well short of what is required for defence and the country" and that UK would be spending just 2.68% of GDP in 2030.
New on @indicator.media: I ran an adversarial audit of Pangram, one of the buzziest AI text detectors out there. It claims a 99.98% accuracy rate.
I was ultimately able to get Pangram to misidentify AI text as human 85.7% of the time in an adversarial set of 588 text samples.
...radicalised individuals will act on their own emotional truth and push the boundaries of what is lawful. Perhaps this is what we have seen in Belfast this week and elsewhere previously. The role of bad actors and the deliberate incitement of instability needs further study...m/f
More information which plays to emotional truth - rather than rational truth - is swilling around. People who no longer trust the democratic institutions may be vulnerable to emotional truth - which has a lower bar of truth than verified "news". It can also radicalise....m/f
Declining trust in liberal institutions is the key.It's complicated but basically, people have stopped believing the state is working for them. The question is why they think that....partly declining standards of living and life chances but also made worse by the changing news eco system.....m/f
Changing tech-social media-has weakened the mainstream news business model and removed a layer of verification ie: making sure things are true. Also means anyone with a smartphone can publish with zero verification. Manipulation of information inc. by bad actors, has never been easier...m/f
The Demos report examines this in more detail. This piece for @reutersinstitute.bsky.social explores similar themes reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/how-pro...
Priority now must be to find a solution. Watch this space. ends
Shashank Joshi
George Pearkes
Eliot Higgins
Alexios Mantzarlis
Completely agree with @eliothiggins.bsky.social that the Wilton Park report is timely and feeds into our previous Demos paper. Events in Belfast this week just underline the jeopardy posed....and the need to formulate a response....m/f
portal.wiltonpark.org.uk/public/resou...
